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Monday, June 1, 2015

Between Books - Son of Faster Cheaper

When I opened the envelope and saw the book I knew Son of FasterCheaperwas different than
most Between Books. This half-sized book
reminded me of the cartoon books that I would often check out as a kid collecting
newspaper comics. And that was really
not where the parallel ended.

Son of Faster Cheaper: A Sharp Look Inside the Animation Businessby Floyd Norman showcases
cartoons drawn by Norman during his 50 plus years in animation at studios
including Disney, Hannah-Barbera and Pixar.
The cartoons are arranged in themed chapters that include glimpses of “Working
for Walt”, Disney under the Eisner era, the “Animation Boom”, Norman’s forced “retirement”
from Disney, and more. The typical page
is filled with one of Norman’s cartoons with maybe a sentence or two of
commentary about what his image was capturing about the studios. The book includes several negative perspectives
about Michael Eisner and his era. And
being a story artist he attacks the mistreatment of animators and studio artists.

One of the things that Norman does not back away from is
Walt Disney. And he does not give Walt,
who I have always been under the impression Norman respected, an easy
time. He does show in his images the grumpy
Walt who could be tough on struggling story men. And his Disney model is very much an older gentleman
with a hump and cigarette who is tougher older businessman than Uncle
Walt. And one gets the feeling he can
capture the tough side of Walt with “love.”
But the man he does not appear to love is Michael Eisner and his stream
of vice presidents. Norman paints the Eisner
era as one of greed with images of Eisner retooling the new Animation building
and leading Disney animation through high profits for the few and never the
animators. Though, Frank Wells does seem
to get a fairly positive depiction in his cartoons.

Norman also depicts the work of animation. In one chapter he captures in images the
thankless job of the story artist, which very much feels like a visual representation
of some of the themes found in Mouse in
Transition. And he also provides his
thoughts on animation directors, having worked with both good and bad ones.

Norman’s images are simple.
But many of them are striking.
For some reason his depictions of the new Animation building really
caught my attention, showing the state of things as he saw them under
Eisner. And much like those cartoon
books of my childhood, Norman gave me several chuckles.

Son of FasterCheaperis
a quick and easy to read. It helped me remember
cartoon books of my childhood.
Personally, I like having a physical copy of this book in my hands, just
so I can flip through the cartoons drawn by a legend. And I found myself happy to see that future
volumes by Norman, which I assume will be similar, are forthcoming in the future.